Category: Social Network Websites

Early this month, a class of Match.com subscribers sued the service for breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith, and negligent misrepresentation in federal district court in the Northern District of Texas. The complaint alleges that while Match.com claims to have “millions of active subscribers, well over half of the profiles on its site belong to inactive members who have canceled their membership or allowed their subscriptions to lapse and/or are fake and fraudulent profiles posted by scammers and others.” It asserts that as for inactive members, Match.com “takes virtually no action to remove these profiles . . . for months and sometimes years,” only removing them after former subscribers call to complain. As to fake and fraudulent profiles, the complaint states that Match.com “makes little to no effort to vet, police, or remove these profiles.”

According to the complaint, Match.com intentionally failed to remove the profiles of inactive and former subscribers in order to induce members of the class action “to either become or remain paying members.” The complaint claims that Match.com: (1) “routinely and intentionally represents that there are significantly more active members on the website than there actually are,” (2) falsely labels profiles as “active within [#] days” when the accounts belong to canceled and/or inactive accounts,” (3) sends “former and inactive members ‘winks’ informing them that a potential match is trying to contact them in order to get them to renew their subscriptions (only to find out after they do so that the supposed seeker does not exist), (4) fails “to effectively vet new profiles to determine whether they are fake or fraudulent despite easily discernible ‘red flags’ (including repeated use of imagery and language, and use of notorious IP address origins), and (5) misleads users into believing that the site has equal numbers of male and female members while the “makeup of actual active users is heavily skewed towards single males.”

To support their allegations, Plaintiffs point to changes in the site’s architecture. For instance, whereas members could themselves hide their profiles after becoming inactive members from 2006 to 2007, only Match.com employees could block a member’s profile from view beginning in 2008. The complaint also recounts the testimony of former Match.com employees who attest that the company’s database included a “huge” number of “filler profiles.” As for the complaint’s allegation that Match.com failed to police the site for fraudulent members, the plaintiffs seemingly point to language in the Terms of Use agreement that permits Match.com to review and delete content that violates its terms. They also suggest that “computer technologies exist that would allow the company to effectively and efficiently police its website for the benefit and safety of its customers.” Read More